A year ago Panorama was restored to its old Monday night peak-time slot. But there were those who asked whether the corporation should have pulled the plug on its current affairs flagship rather than try to revive it. Would it still be able to do grown-up television journalism, or would the pressure to reach out to a younger, more diverse audience result in trivial, inconsequential reporting? Was giving the programme another chance under a new editor, Sandy Smith, all a terrible mistake?

Whatever Panorama's present failings - and there are some - new blood is at least flowing through its arteries. It is alive and getting stronger. You can see it in the livelier step of the programme's reporters: for years Vivian White looked as if he was expecting his contract not to be renewed, and Jane Corbin, an experienced foreign reporter, had become increasingly invisible.

Now both seem to have had their confidence restored - with White doing domestic stories about race, healthcare and unemployed teenagers, and Corbin digging up details of corrupt arms deals and exposing the fratricidal conflict among the Palestinians. Shelley Joffre, who used to look like a local reporter hired only to demonstrate the BBC's commitment to the regions and nations, has reported with authority on the drug companies' deceits, and the way the Ministry of Defence kept dangerous Nimrod aircraft flying.

Experienced cadre

"Where are the bimbos?", demands Smith. "Our reporters are a real asset, and in terms of getting the story straight we have an extremely experienced cadre. Give me credit for restoring them!"

Among Panorama's regular reporters, only John Ware seems to have suffered. Before Smith took over, Ware doubted that his brand of serious reporting would be welcome on the new Panorama. "It was a bit like being tolerated in your own home," he says. But now he's hoping to return: "If it's 'hullo John, nice to see you' as opposed to 'hi, you'd better come in', I'll be there."

The new Panorama reinstated the programme presenter, Jeremy Vine has given it a younger face. He has helped hold the series together, as well as reporting some programmes himself. And he's there when a long interview is needed, as it was with Alan Johnston, held hostage in Gaza for 114 days.

But what is the new Panorama's agenda? Smith came from Watchdog, inspiring speculation that under him it would become a consumer programme concerned largely with lifestyle issues.

However, he insists that he hasn't gone for easy options. "We haven't done Tesco, we haven't done house prices, we haven't done obesity - those are the things you would do if you wanted to compete with Tonight with Trevor McDonald," he says. "I have never read or had conversations with audience planners or other sooth-sayers who would have told me what I should be commissioning to put more bums on seats. And I think that's blindingly obvious from my story list."

Certainly Panorama has covered a lot of ground this past year. But at home it has not often ventured into very difficult territory, while most of the foreign stories have been about Brits abroad. Why not, for example, tackle the prospect of 70 million Turks heading our way? "Bloody hell!", Smith explodes, "8.30pm on BBC1 is not the place for 'should Turkey join the EU?'". Adding quickly, "But it is the place for the Pakistan Taliban, and black politics in America."

But is Panorama really the place for Dog-Fighting Undercover? This "special" cost a fortune and took more than a year to make. Smith is so proud of it that he's put it up for a Royal Television Society Award. But dog-fighting is not going to make Panorama an important programme.

If the agenda is less ambitious than it could be, the new half-hour slot has also imposed some limits. Too often the "big picture" gets squeezed out, or relegated to a brief final paragraph. "It's difficult to go big in half an hour," Smith concedes, "It's a challenge to get deeper."

But while it can be difficult to move from the detail to the big picture that is the point of Panorama - and too often now it doesn't really happen, even in the longer "special" programmes. A Good Kicking, about the failure to bring to justice British soldiers responsible for the brutal treatment and death of an Iraqi prisoner, had a small audience but a sky-high audience reaction rating. But then, having wound viewers up, it just stopped. Smith accepts that sometimes that's not enough. Next season, he promises, Panorama will examine the legacy of this and similar incidents in Iraq.

Cock-ups

The past year has also seen some cock-ups. Murder at the World Cup, about the death of cricket coach Bob Woolmer in the West Indies, confidently asserted he had been "strangled in his hotel room"; police now say he died of natural causes. And the BBC's own complaints unit criticised a programme on the dangers of Wi-Fi systems in school classrooms as being "misleading". Smith and his deputies need to be more rigorous executive editors.

So what's the viewers' verdict? Some oldies have left, more young people have been attracted. The average audience for all Panorama programmes over the year is now 3 million viewers, about 400,000 more than before the programme was restored to peak time. This is less than over-enthusiastic BBC managers at first claimed, but still respectable. The average appreciation index (AI) rating is marginally up, from 78 to 79.

"Fundamentally the audience is liking what we do. It's younger, and more mixed across the classes," says Smith.

"The clamour around the launch has subsided, we have earned the right to be in our slot and to commission what we want to do. I'm feeling very confident about next year. The language of the BBC is now about making programmes you can trust, and that says something."

This is the perfect opportunity for Smith to be more ambitious for his programme; to choose heavier subject matter, and grapple more often with the big picture. As Grace Wyndham Goldie, Panorama's founder, said half a century ago, "We should be able to turn out an important programme."

· Richard Lindley is a former Panorama reporter and the author of Panorama: Fifty Years of Pride and Paranoia